


sarabande

by sunbrights



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cinderella Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-14 05:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17502254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbrights/pseuds/sunbrights
Summary: The choice she's made is reckless, and foolish, and selfish. But at least the choice is hers.(Ella Enchanted/Cinderella AU)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewildwilds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewildwilds/gifts).



The entire kingdom is invited to the festival: three balls held over the course of three nights, hosted at the royal palace. Officially, it’s a celebration of the prince’s safe return after his time abroad, and his reintroduction to the royal court. 

Unofficially, Mayumi whispers over the edge of her vegetable stall, it’s for him to choose a wife. 

“And you know,” she goes on, while Peko is choosing carrots from a stack, “his sister’s personal chef is a regular of mine, too, so you can be sure that’s the truth of it.”

Peko moves on to the onions. “Of course.”

“Oh!” Mayumi sighs, patting life back into her own already rosy cheeks. “Can you just imagine? He meets a girl the first night, falls in love the second, and they celebrate their engagement the third!” She flaps one hand at Peko’s elbow. “Tell me you’re planning to go.”

The back of Peko’s throat itches. “I’m planning to go,” she answers.

Mayumi shrills with excitement. “Oh, good! A pretty thing like you is _bound_ to catch his eye. By next week I’ll be calling you ‘Princess’!” She tallies the stack of vegetables with a glance. “That’s seventeen for you today, dear.”

Peko nods politely, pays, and moves on.

She won’t go, to any of the balls. It isn’t for her, not in the state she’s fallen to.

Dame Enoshima has never failed to remind her.

*

The night of the first ball, Peko helps her stepsisters dress. Mukuro is as disinterested in the process as anyone could be; Peko is sure she’s attending only at the behest of her sister. Her dress is forest green, with simple silver accents, and Peko has never seen her more uncomfortable than while she’s wearing it.

Junko demands everything. She tries three different dresses and seven pairs of shoes, and when she finally decides, she demands alterations. For the dress, she has Peko lift the hem, tighten the buttons, and add a trim of fine golden thread at the end of both sleeves; for the slippers, she has Peko fashion padded inserts so that they won’t chafe her heels when she dances.

The last piece is her necklace. She spends almost twenty minutes going back and forth between a string of large, round pearls and a heavy garnet pendant. She orders Peko to hold them both in front of her chest without moving, so that she can compare them.

When they’re already fifteen minutes late for the start of the ball, Junko lays one loose, lazy hand against her chest. “I’ve decided,” she says finally, with a sigh. “I’ll wear the pearls.” She snaps the fingers of her other hand. “Clasp it for me.” 

Peko fetches it. She draws the chain against Junko’s throat, and clasps it behind her neck.

*

The curse wasn’t meant as a curse. It was meant as a gift: to Peko’s mother, if not to Peko herself. 

She’s only heard the story secondhand. She doesn’t know the fairy’s name, or what she looks like. She only knows that the fairy came to visit in the early days after her birth. She knows that she had been an energetic child, but colicky, and cried often— and that the fairy, in a burst of foolish imagination, had attempted to help.

“I grant you the gift of obedience,” the fairy had said, with one gentle thumb against Peko’s cheek as she cried. “Quiet, child.”

And Peko had gone silent.

*

Junko turns in the mirror; the dress is red, with elaborate pleats in the skirt and a high-low hem. She looks beautiful, if brazen. She’ll draw every eye in the ballroom without even trying.

“It’ll work,” she decides, turning the ball of her foot to inspect her gleaming golden heel. “For the first night, anyway.” She meets Peko’s eyes in the mirror, and her triumphant grin slashes across her face. “The prince won’t be able to resist _this,_ don’t you think?”

Peko only looks back at her.

Junko lets her head dip into a delicate tilt. “Say it.”

Peko’s throat itches, then burns. Her head aches. Her stomach rolls. She counts in her head, and lasts to fifteen.

“The prince won’t be able to resist you,” she says.

Junko pats Peko’s cheek once, sharply, with the flat of her hand. “I’ll ask Mother if we can invite you to the wedding,” she croons, and only manages to keep her bubble of laughter in until right when she turns on her heel to leave.

*

Dame Enoshima and her daughters take the only carriage to the palace. They leave behind a long list of chores, laid out in no uncertain terms, to be completed before they return.

Peko will not go to the ball. Of that, everyone is certain.

But a young woman named Kira will.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time she met Fuyuhiko, he got stuck in the branches of her mother’s hazel tree.

He was seven. She was eight. His mother and hers had been friends since finishing school, and that summer had been the first time she brought him with her, when she came to visit.

The tree was in the woods behind the estate, in a grove down by the river. It was tall, and strong, and beautiful, and Peko liked the way sunlight scattered between the leaves and cast shadows like marble against your skin. Sometimes she and her mother would pack a basket and have lunch together beneath the canopy, just the two of them.

He insisted on seeing it, when she mentioned it to him. Her father had instructed her that morning not to leave the garden, in no uncertain terms (“Stay inside the gate,”) but Fuyuhiko’s new order (“Let’s go see it!”) countermanded him. 

(She still remembers lifting the latch on the gate and feeling no resistance— how it had been terrifying and exhilarating, like she had been the one to disobey her father, and not the curse’s shifting priorities.)

She’d climbed the hazel tree before. She knew the layout of the branches, and how they were sparser and thinner on the northern side. She recognized the place where he got stuck: a middle branch that didn’t have any obvious handholds above it, and was easier to climb up to than down from. She’d clung to the trunk the same way when it happened to her, with her arms as far around it as they could go.

“There’s a knot you can step on,” she told him. “Under you, on the left.”

“I know where to go,” he snapped, even while his left foot scrabbled down against the bark.

It was fine, in the end. She gave him indirect directions until he managed to shimmy to a branch low enough to jump from. He got dirt on his nice white trousers, and a twig or two in his hair from where smaller, slender branches had caught in it, but he wasn’t bothered by it, so neither was she.

When they got back to the house, though, her father took one look at them and went red in the face, from his neck up to his ears. 

“Come here,” he snapped, hand outstretched— and it was just another order to follow.

*

Abstractly, Peko understood that her mother’s friend was the queen, and that Fuyuhiko was the prince, and what that meant. She had seen the processions through the town square, and the beautiful, gilded carriage, and each of the elaborate seals representing different members of the royal family.

(The crown prince was represented by a coiled golden dragon, smaller and less threatening than the fanged, maned beast that represented the king. Peko had always thought it was pretty, like she could run her fingers over it and feel warm, smooth scales beneath her skin.)

The boy on the tree branch wasn’t anything like the solemn royal dragon; he was smudged with dirt and scowling and not quite as good at climbing trees as she was. He complained about his sister, and laughed when Peko told him a story about a fox that had hidden between the hazel tree’s roots and surprised her mother so badly she’d fallen on her backside.

But he was still the prince. Her father insisted that she be more respectful, and so the next time he came to visit, she tried. She wore a different garden dress, thicker and starchier and with a longer skirt, and remembered to curtsy, but only just so.

He wrinkled his nose until she straightened back up.

“Let’s go see the tree again,” he told her, and he was already smiling, already reaching for her hand. “I grew since last month. I’m gonna make it to the top this time.”

*

Fuyuhiko gave her orders often. He didn’t _intend_ them as orders, but the curse never cared about intent— only phrasing.

“Follow me,” he’d say, and she’d trail three steps behind him until they found what he was looking for.

“Look at that,” he’d say, and her head would scream with pain until she found the exact cloud he was pointing to.

“Wait here,” he’d say, and her feet would freeze to the ground until he came back into view.

She tried once to get him to stop. He told her to pull down the branch of a peach tree so that he could reach high enough to pluck one himself— and as she rose up on her tiptoes, she said: “You should ask.”

“What?”

“You should ask me, instead of telling me.”

He frowned. “I’m not _really_ telling you.”

That wasn’t the point. If she could explain to him the point, he might understand— but her tongue suddenly felt thick and heavy and dry, like she’d gone hours in the sun without a drink. 

“You should still ask,” was all she could manage, “It’s polite.”

He twisted the peach to separate the stem from the tree. He wasn’t focused on her, only on making sure he didn’t bruise the fruit on the way down. “I guess.”

It helped a little, that afternoon. (“Lemme have some of yours,” he said later, during lunch. Then, as she offered him her plate: “I mean… can I have some of yours?”) By the next month, though, he’d already forgotten. 

She decided she didn’t mind. They were small commands, and harmless; it was simply how he was used to speaking. She couldn’t tell him why, and so it was easier to do as he asked, no matter how he phrased it.

She didn’t try again.

*

It was important that no one knew. The curse had no exceptions, and no limitations; any order she was given, from any person, had to be carried out. She could be told to bake a cake, or to steal a horse, or to drown herself in the river, and she would be compelled to do them all.

No one knew: not the house servants, or Fuyuhiko, or her father. Her mother had protected her from the world her entire life, up to and including the only command she’d ever given her: “Never tell anyone about the curse.”

When she died, it felt like the world had been waiting.

*

Her funeral gown was too short, at the skirt and at the sleeves. She was almost sixteen, and had been growing faster than her clothes could be tailored for months; her mother passed too quickly for them to buy a new gown in advance.

She didn’t cry during the funeral, or during the wake. There were so many people she barely recognized or had never met, sweeping her into hugs or clutching her hands, all of them with their eyes puffy and red, and she could only thank them for coming.

She left, halfway through. She hid the only place she could think of: beneath the hazel tree. She imagined it would be comforting, or soothing, to be alone in the semi-silence of the woods, shielded by an embrace of familiar leaves— but with her mother gone, a tree was just a tree.

Fuyuhiko was the first to find her. She could tell it was him and not her father from his footsteps; he stopped, hesitated, retreated, then hesitated again. It was long seconds before he finally ducked beneath the low-hanging branches, and even then it was cautious and one-handed.

She made to stand. “No, don’t—” He held both hands up. “Don’t get up.”

She sat back down.

“I just…” He was dressed in fine black silk; well-made, but not attention-grabbing. He’d known her mother, too. “You were gone a while,” he explained. “Your dad didn’t know where you went.”

He wouldn’t.

“My mom’s out of the country,” he went on, when she didn’t speak. “I sent her a letter. To- To tell her what happened. She would’ve been here if she—” His expression twisted, but there wasn’t any way out of the rest of the sentence. “If she’d been here.” 

“It was sudden,” Peko said.

She was making him uncomfortable. She could tell, and she still didn’t know what to do to ease it. She could say something, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She could show him that she was alright, but she didn’t know how.

“Are you… going to go back?” he asked.

The rains were heavy, that year. The water had pooled at the bottom of the grove, and soaked the soil at the base of the hazel tree. The delicate lace of her mourning gown was already smeared with mud, and the hem had torn open on the left side when it snagged on dead twigs higher up the hill.

“I think I’ve made fool enough of myself either way,” she said. 

“Who gives a shit what anybody else thinks?” She looked at him; he was staring intently at a patch of mud near the toe of his shoe. “Nobody gets to tell you how to act today.” He flushed. “Or- Or any other day. Obviously. But— I mean—” 

She understood what he meant. She understood better than he did, maybe. She was the only one who could ever understand at all, now.

Like that, it all came at once. 

It was like all the empty spaces in her chest and throat and heart were suddenly filling: too fast, and too much. It was overwhelming, pressure and pain and terrible, unforgiving weight. Her mother was dead. She was gone, and now Peko was alone with the curse.

She pressed her forehead against the bark of the hazel tree.

“I can go, if you want,” he said softly, behind her. “If you want to be alone, I mean.”

“Will you stay?” she asked, the most she could trust her trembling voice with.

He didn’t say anything else. He sat on the opposite side of the tree, his clothes ruined in the mud, and listened to her cry.

*

A month after her mother’s death, her father sent her to finishing school. He told her it was because she needed to be prepared to officially enter society; she knew it was because it still hurt him to see her face beside an empty chair at the dining table.

“What for?” Fuyuhiko complained. “You don’t need any of that shit.”

“It’s alright,” she told him. “I’ll write to you.”

He didn’t answer. He wouldn’t look at her. She touched his hand, and for the first time it felt strange— like prickling, like chills, like a moment before burning.

It made him uncomfortable. He didn’t pull away, but she could recognize the tension; it always settled on him the same way, like cords drawn tight between his shoulder blades. She drew herself away instead, slowly enough to not embarrass him.

“Yeah,” he said finally, but his voice was rough. He scrubbed his cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Yeah, I guess so.”

*

_Dear Prince Fuyuhiko,_

_I hope this letter finds you and your family well. My father has been travelling the past several weeks, so I haven’t heard much of home; please don’t feel compelled to reply if I’ve interrupted any important function._

_I’m enjoying my dancing lessons. The Mistress says I have natural rhythm, and only need refinement. Perhaps that’s the goal of every lesson, but I still enjoy it more than the others. I imagine it will feel very different at a real social function, and not just practice with my classmates. But I’m happy to practice in the meantime._

_Please send my regards to your family._

_Sincerely,  
Peko Pekoyama_

*

_Peko,_

_You don’t have to be so formal. Nobody else is reading these but me. Here’s the proof: my sister just made her third governess in a month quit, and my father decided out of all the other things I could be doing, that’s what I need to be dealing with. Tells you what they think of my time. Why would they bother opening my mail?_

_I’ve always been shit at court dancing. My mother doesn’t let me near the dance floor if she can help it, which is fine by me. Maybe when you get back you can explain the appeal to me._

_Yours,  
Fuyuhiko_

*

The girls in her class called him charming. They took turns speculating about what marrying him would be like, and huddled together after hours to whisper secondhand stories about his steady patience, refined tastes, and gentle manner.

Peko never participated. It would ruin their fun, she thought, if they knew.

*

When her father called her home, he wouldn’t tell her why. He only said that it was urgent, and gave a directive in his letter for the Head Mistress to unenroll her immediately from the school.

When she arrived, she understood: it was because he couldn’t afford the cost of keeping the secret any longer.

His trading business had been struggling for months, even before her mother’s death. Since then, the situation had only gotten worse: the house was nearly empty of furniture, and almost all of the staff had been dismissed. What hadn’t been sold was concentrated in the foyer, the drawing room, and the dining room, for appearances to guests who rarely came.

The only one to visit with any frequency was Dame Enoshima: a tall, brash woman who wore her wealth on her fingers and around her throat. Peko was never sure how she and her father met; he said that she’d stopped by his stall while he’d been out selling at market, and she insisted that she’d known Peko’s mother, somehow, through a network of names Peko didn’t recognize. 

Regardless, she visited them often: for tea, and then for lunch, and then for the entire day. She brought her daughters with her more often than not, and it became Peko’s job to entertain them while her father entertained their mother. 

They were both beautiful, though Mukuro in a way that was more reserved and understated than her sister, Junko. They were twins, younger than Peko by only a year. 

The second night, Junko dropped her hand muff on her way into the foyer. “Oh,” she laughed, one hand against her chest, “I am a _mess_ today.” Then, instead of bending to retrieve it, she caught Peko’s eye across the room and said, “Grab that for me?” 

It was an order. Peko would have done it even if it hadn’t been— but it was, and she stepped forward to follow it without hesitation. At the time, she hadn’t thought anything of it. It was just another of dozens of harmless, offhand orders she received every day.

(Now, she wonders if Junko knew what she was doing, even then.)

*

“You know,” Junko said one evening, a week into Dame Enoshima’s daily visits, “it seems like there’s an obvious answer to all your father’s—” she cleared her throat delicately, “— _financial_ troubles.”

There wasn’t. Between her mother’s death, his debt, and their slipping social standing, Peko was sure her father had already tried anything obvious. But Dame Enoshima was a guest, and so were her daughters.

“Is there?” she asked politely.

“Oh, easy.” Junko set her chin against the heel of her hand. Her eyes were sharp and bright, and in the moment, Peko mistook it for simple mockery. “All you’d have to do is marry the prince.”

Peko felt her face flare hot. She lowered her head to focus on the embroidery in her lap. “I’m sure that’s not a possibility.”

“Why not?” Junko pressed. “You’re childhood friends, aren’t you? I mean—” She covered her mouth with just the tips of her fingers. “That’s the rumor.”

That only made it worse. Fuyuhiko didn’t need a rumor like that swirling around him. Peko smiled back, as best she could. “I don’t think that’s a factor.”

“Aw, don’t be like that.” Junko leaned forward, draping one long leg over the other. Her lips formed deliberately around the order: “Tell me what _you_ really want.”

Peko’s chest constricted.

It didn’t matter what she wanted. She was cursed, and that made her dangerous: to herself, and to anyone around her. She could be used by anyone, to do anything. No enemy would need an army, if the king had a wife who could be controlled with a word.

She could never be with him. The risk was too much; it really was that simple.

But... the wishing could be hers. The feeling, aching and buzzing and warm, could stay locked behind her ribcage, where no one could see it, or manipulate it, or abuse it. The thought, the daydream, the fantasy— it could be for her and no one else. She was content with that, if it kept him safe.

That night, Junko plucked it from her throat like she was ripping a flower from the earth, pinched and twisted between her nails.

*

Three weeks later, her father asked Dame Enoshima to marry him.

It was their only option, he said. They were out of time. Everything valuable they owned had already been sold. Either she needed to marry, or he did— and he was reasonably certain Dame Enoshima would say yes.

One day, he said, she would learn to love them like family.

*

The wedding ball was held at the estate— in the garden, so that no guests would see the state of the house. It had been the furthest her father had been willing to compromise with Dame Enoshima’s lofty plans for her wedding; the location was his choice, and everything else was hers.

Junko used the bustle of the party to test the limits of her newfound leverage, holding Peko by the elbows and leaning in close whenever she spoke. She would smile, kiss the air next to Peko’s cheek, and whisper an order against her ear.

Peko cleared trash, and scrubbed serving platters. She kept Junko’s wine glass full, and Mukuro’s hands free. Once each task was complete, Junko was ready with a new one, always just a few feet away, ready to catch Peko by the wrist.

Once, she lapsed. Her mother seized her by the elbow before she could catch up to Peko in the crowd, and Peko used the opportunity to disappear into the house.

It was empty now, from top to bottom. What was left of her and her father’s things had already been packed and sent ahead to Dame Enoshima’s manor. The few hours remaining of the ball were the last she’d ever have.

She sat on the floor of what used to be her bedroom, in the square of light cast by the wide window on the southern wall, and tried to memorize as much as she could.

The reprieve didn't last. Eventually, the door between the garden and the dining room downstairs creaked open. It wasn’t her father, or Dame Enoshima; the footsteps had no direction, circling the rooms on the bottom floor. Any thief would have seen the empty rooms and left. Only Junko had something valuable enough to keep searching for, and when Peko heard the steps reach the staircase, she stood to accept whatever came next.

When the door swung open, though, it wasn’t Junko in the hall.

The only other time she’d seen Fuyuhiko dressed so formally had been the day of her mother’s funeral. His doublet was red and gold, well-fitted and intricately embroidered. She suddenly felt swallowed up in her own gown, an older dress of Mukuro’s that now had dust on the skirt and water stains on the sleeves.

She'd known he'd been invited. (Dame Enoshima had cast the widest net she could, and the fact that she was marrying Peko’s mother’s widower hadn’t stopped her from claiming a flimsy connection to the royal family.) But he was busy. He had responsibilities. He was leaving in just a few days on an extended trip abroad. And he was here, now, standing on the threshold of her empty childhood bedroom.

“Your sister said you’d be in here,” he explained. His eyes were already rounding the room: the empty walls, the barren floor, and her hands, wrinkled with dishwater. 

She hid them in the folds of her skirt. She didn’t know what Junko had been trying to achieve, other than to humiliate her.

“I’m sorry.” There was nothing else in the room to provide a distraction. She could only meet his gaze, as steadily as she was able. “I didn’t realize you’d be attending today. Dame Enoshima will be excited to know you’re here.”

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I just came to see you.”

Her cheeks warmed, even in the already warm, stale air of the house. “Oh.”

“Just because, I’m going away soon, so—”

“Of course.”

“But if you’re— busy, or something, I—” 

“No.” She stepped aside, as if there were anything blocking his way in an empty room. “... You can stay, if you like.”

He left the door open behind him when he came inside. It wasn’t a bedroom anymore, and it certainly wasn’t _hers_ anymore, but her heart still leapt into a quick, rough rhythm in her chest. 

He didn’t ask about the house. Perhaps he didn’t need to; there was no way the rumors about her father’s debt and their family’s decline hadn’t spread far enough to reach him. Instead, familiar tension settled over him, drawn tight between his shoulders, and stayed there.

He leaned over the windowsill to peer down into the garden below. “Tired of the party?” he asked.

“I’m happy to celebrate with my father.” He stared at her, expectant, and she suppressed the urge to smile. “... but I may have needed some time away from my step-sisters.”

“You’re missing the dancing,” he pointed out.

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but that’s better for everybody. You’re—” She was usually good at reading his mood. He was naturally expressive, and he’d never been one to mask his emotions. This was something different, though. Not new, because she was sure she'd seen it before, but strange— and then it was gone. “I mean, you actually like that stuff.” 

She did. She had loved all of her lessons, when she was at school. Dancing was more than just a social hurdle; it was movement and cohesion, timing and rhythm. She hadn’t had the opportunity yet to dance at all since she’d been home. Not even at her father’s wedding.

(She could hear Junko’s voice, syrupy sweet and close her ear: “Keep off the dance floor tonight.”)

An impulse rose in her chest. It reminded her of being a child with her hand on the latch of the gate: exhilarating, terrifying, and dangerous.

“You’ll need to practice,” she said. His eyebrows lifted, skeptical but curious. “... It will be important, when you’re away.”

(“Don’t talk to them. Go back in and grab us another bottle of wine.”)

He snorted. “What,” he said, “are you offering?”

(“Aren’t you having a nice time? Say you’re having a nice time.”)

“I could,” she said, her heart high and wild in her chest, “if you think it would help.”

They were alone in an empty room of a house that no longer belonged to her. There was no music, or cues, or other partners. Realistically, it wouldn’t have prepared him at all for social dancing in a foreign royal court. He could have rejected her. On some level, maybe he should have.

Instead, he bent to unlatch the window. 

Cool, fresh air spilled into the room. When he turned back towards her, he was framed by orange afternoon sunlight and the spirited, rising tones of the orchestra in the garden below.

(The feeling, aching and buzzing and warm—) 

She lifted the bottom of her skirt. His palm set loosely against her waist. Their free hands came together, and it was strange, unnerving, and wonderful. 

She took him through each of the dances she’d learned at school, as the orchestra took them through the music. His technique was fine; he knew the steps, and followed the rhythm. He was stiff, that was all, and self-conscious.

“You can relax,” she told him gently.

“Speak for yourself.” He ducked his head to grimace at his feet. “I’m the one who has to do this in a room full of fucking politicians.”

“It’s only me today.”

She felt more than heard his laugh against her cheek.

Her mother had always taught her to be careful. She needed to be vigilant, in order to protect herself and the people around her. But he was relaxing with her, bit by bit. The music slowed, and the evening breeze cooled, and his hand slid from the side of her waist to the small of her back.

In that moment, away from everything, from the debt and the distance, she let herself pretend it could just be the two of them: safe, warm, secure, and together.

But wishes, wants, daydreams, fantasies— they weren’t for her. They never had been.

He didn’t come to the estate that day planning to say it. She’d known him too well and for too long to think otherwise. It was an impulse, as much as hers had been; only he hadn’t known better, the way she had.

He bent his head against the crook of her neck, took a single shaky breath in, and whispered, “Marry me.”

Her breath froze in her chest. It started out as shock, and then it was a thrill, and then it was creeping, dawning panic, and a familiar itch at the back of her throat. She tried to swallow it down, but it burned like bile, sour and sickening.

He must have seen something in her face. He drew back, just enough to catch her hands in his. “I- I know,” he murmured, strained. “Just— hear me out.” 

Her heart ached. She fought the tears that burned behind her eyes.

He thought he’d asked her a question.

“You wouldn’t have to go to court,” he promised, hushed and close, “or- or do anything else you didn’t want to. I could save your house.” She clenched her eyes shut. “I- I could help get your father back on his feet. And I…” In all the years she’d known him, she’d never heard him sound so fragile. “I really…”

She couldn’t marry him. (She would marry him.) She was a knife in the night, a drop of poison in a glass, a clutch of fingers around his throat while he slept. (She _must_ marry him.) All it would take was one observant enemy, vindictive step-sister, or clumsily-worded frustration.

“I love you.” It was just a breath against her cheek, helpless and soft. “I want to be with you.”

He was finished. The stopgap of the second command was fading. Her head was spinning, pounding, burning. Yes. Say yes. Marry him. Marry him. _**Marry him.**_

She had let a few moments of resentment get the better of her, and now he was going to pay the price. She could feel herself failing, individual threads of resistance snapping one by one.

She loved him so much. She wanted to marry him. She wouldn't marry him.

(She _had to_ marry him.)

Her lips parted. Her vocal cords thrummed. The answer burned on the flat of her tongue. 

She wasn’t strong enough to protect him.

Then, through the haze, she heard him say, “Don’t answer now.”

Like that, the claws of the curse let her go. It was exhilarating and disorienting and awful, like breaking the surface of the water a moment before drowning. 

He let go of one of her hands. She felt unstable and adrift, until she realized he’d done it so that he could cup her cheek. “Wait until I see you next.” A fourth command. His thumb swiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “That way, you- you can think about it. I’ll write to you. And then when I come back, we’ll talk.”

*

He did write to her, while he was gone. Every week, there was a new letter, marked with the royal seal of the crown prince. Every week, she ran her thumb over the curled tail of the dragon, pretended she could feel the warm, smooth scales against her skin— and then left the letter for her sisters to find.

Every week, Junko tossed it into the fire, and ordered Peko to sit by the hearth while it burned.

It didn’t matter what she wanted.

As long as he never saw her again, he would always be safe from her.


End file.
